


Allegiance

by kasiapeia



Series: Neither Time Nor Space Could Keep Us Apart [5]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: But nothing that wasn't spoilt in either of the trailers or advertised, I'm very excited to see how this season's story goes so I'll probably do more of these shorts, Mild Season of the Drifter spoilers, Post-Allegiance quest, WHICH WAS SO COOL BY THE WAY GJ BUNGIE, mild Forsaken spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-11-17 23:01:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18108287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kasiapeia/pseuds/kasiapeia
Summary: They were asked to choose. They chose differently. It changes nothing, but it changes everything.Once, they would have called each other sister.Now is a different story.





	Allegiance

She was shrouded by shadows dark as pitch as though she had peeled them away from the walls of the cave to wrap them around herself; only her eyes, violet like the Void, shine in the dark. Her Ghost whirs nervously beneath the hood of her cape, the fabric just thick enough to hide the pale light emanating from its blue ocular lens.

Slowly, she presses forward, holding her cannon steady. The Darkness presses down upon her as she ventures deeper, becoming stronger and stronger with every step she takes. Still, she presses on, ignoring the thumping of her metal heart in her ears.

There is a part of her, however small, that is afraid.

She is dredgen.

She shouldn’t be afraid.

The thick metal of her helm muffles her surprised shout of pain as a bullet clips her shoulder, hot as fire. It shreds straight through the leather of her gauntlets, exposing dark metal that glows red in the bullet’s wake. She whirs around, bullet sliding into the chamber of her cannon not with a click, but a rush of whispers that hit all at once.

“Next time,” a voice echoes in the black; everywhere and nowhere at the same time. She spins wildly, searching for the source, but the only light in the cave comes from the beating emerald glow of her gun’s tainted heart, and it isn’t nearly enough for her to see. “I won’t miss, _Dredgen Sc_ _á_ _th._ ”

She dislikes the title, but Eli had insisted. Eli _always_ insisted on everything. “I presume you’re Aunor’s pet Warlock.” Her helm distorts her voice ever-so-slightly, adding a dark rasp to her already metallic voice. “I suppose I can also presume that you’ve been keeping tabs on me.”

“I know enough,” says the Warlock, still hidden somewhere deep within the shadows. “A hero of the Red War turned into the very thing we Guardians stand against.”

“ _We_?” She has to fight the urge to laugh. “No, Warlock. You too are a hero of the Red War, or so I hear, but our similarities end there. We are not cut from the same cloth. _You_ Guardians stand for something that _I_ do not.”

“You needn’t stand with him. You could come back.”

“This isn’t about him. This is about the world not being as black and white as your precious little Vanguard make it out to be.” She chooses her words carefully; they are meant to cut but not cut deep. She is still wary. The Warlock can see the glow of her gun—knows where she stands—but she cannot say the same. “Do you even know the Dark, Warlock? Do you know the space in between? Do you know what it is that you Guardians stand against?”

“We stand against the likes of _you_ , Scáth,” hisses the Warlock, and her auditory censors prick as she attempts to track the source of their voice. “Abandon this, and you leave alive. In chains, but alive. The Praxic Order will show mercy.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, and she is. “This isn’t something I can walk away from.”

 Then—

 _There_. A flicker of Arc, encircling gloved fingertips in the corner of the cave. She doesn’t hesitate. She pulls the trigger—once, twice, thrice, in quick, rapid succession, bright sparks of emerald lighting the cave green for the briefest of seconds. Her gun whispers with every shot, but each whisper is as loud as waves crashing on the shore, dying with the final screams of a thousand lost souls.

A thud as a body collapses with a ragged breath, but still she does not lower her gun. Tentatively, her Ghost steps out from under her hood, ocular lens whirring as a white light washes over the rocky floor, guiding her unsteady feet towards the Warlock.

Indigo blood seeps from three bullet holes in their stomach and they hiss as they press a hand to their wounds, even as poison creeps through their system. “End it,” they spit as she approaches. “You and your _foul_ gun. Let it devour my Light once and for all, but I will not be the last to stand against you.”

Something within her hesitates; something strange deep within her gut that she can’t quite name. “Unmask yourself.”

“Why?” The Warlock lets out a pained laugh. “Do you wish to look at me when you kill me? Will the memory of me haunt you as you walk your cursed path?”

She scowls beneath her own helm, but after a long pause, the Warlock complies, removing their silver helmet with shaking hands as she steps closer. Just as the light of her Ghost’s ocular lens passes over her, she freezes.

“Iriah.”

The Stormcaller starts, sky-blue eyes full of nothing but fear and rage as they flick to settle on her own helm. The Awoken Warlock appears just as she had the last time she’d seen her; skin as pale and as blue as her eyes, deep purple-blue hair cropped short in her usual style. The dark, thin tattoos marking her face aren’t entirely visible in the harsh shadows cast by her Ghost’s light, but she knows that they’d be there if she looked.

“Who are you?” whispers the woman she might have once called a sister.

With a sigh, the Dredgen turns away, removing her dark helmet, and setting it aside nearby before turning back to the Warlock.

“Aeryn,” Iriah breathes out. There’s a moment of silence as the truth of reality sets in. The Awoken’s countenance flashes with a mix of emotions; shock, anger, betrayal, and then… A sadness so all-consuming that Aeryn’s own stomach twists.

She has nothing to apologise for, she tells herself. Aeryn-4 has always walked the thin line between Light and Dark. She is the Grey Hope. The Dark in the Light. The Light in the Dark.

Shadow.

Dredgen Scáth.

But under Iriah’s scrutinising gaze, she’s nothing more than Aeryn-4, second only to one other Hunter.

“A hero of the Red War.” Aeryn fights back a bitter laugh. “That’s what they kept telling us both. They didn’t want either of us to know the truth. It wouldn’t have changed a thing. We have chosen our sides.”

Iriah’s Ghost, sensing a moment’s peace, materialises out of thin air. It casts a hesitant look at the corrupted weapon in Aeryn’s grip before turning its attention to the wounds in the Warlock’s side, washing them in the Traveller’s Light. “It wouldn’t have changed a thing?” Iriah repeats. “Aeryn… Aeryn, this changes everything.”

“No, Iriah,” she says. “It doesn’t. You’ve sided with Aunor, to no surprise. And I…”

“Finally went Dark.”

“No.” Her voice is clipped. Curt. Sharper than the poisoned thorns her cannon spits out. “I stand where I have always stand.”

“You sided with _him_!” she snarls. “You chose _the_ _Drifter_ over your own people.”

“We do not share a people.”

“You said that when you didn’t know who I was.”

“And it is still true. I am no longer a Guardian.”

“I heard you left, but Aeryn—”

“There is not a ‘but’ here, Iriah. You stand with them. And I stand alone.”

“Alone? Once you would have called me sister—”

Her heart twinges. They are immortal beings. They are used to being haunted by memories of an age long since passed. This shouldn’t hurt, but it does. She can barely look her in the eyes.

“Once. No longer.”

 “ _Aeryn_.”

“You do not understand half of what the Drifter is attempting to do, Iriah. This is far beyond what you are capable of understanding. You are… a formidable Guardian. Perhaps the best I’ve ever met, but you will not understand this. This involves both the Light and the Dark, and you… You only understand one of those two things. But you… I expected better. You have always been strong. Independent. You fought the Speaker on everything he said, and now… Now you bend to the will of a single Warlock who, like you, does not ken what she fights.”

“There is a reason, Aeryn, that the Darkness is called the _Darkness._ ”

“Since when did you follow so blindly?”

“Since when did you forget _everything_ the Guardians did for you?”

“Everything the Guardians did for me?” she repeats, incredulous. “They were scared of me from the moment I awoke. After Twilight Gap, they tolerated me enough to say my name, but still they could not look me in my eyes. Cayde was the only one who treated me with any amount of dignity, and _you_ let him die.”

“Cayde was murdered by Uldren Sov.”

“So I’ve heard. But you were with him that day, no? _You_ let him go alone. _You_ took your time. _You_ failed—”

“I KNOW I FAILED! I _know_ I failed, but I did _everything_ I could. He was the only person you trusted completely, Aeryn. I have fought alongside you for years and even I cannot say that you ever fully trusted me. And yet… Where were you? Why was _I_ the one who hunted down Uldren? You weren’t even at his funeral.”

She wouldn’t have been wanted. She was too much night, not enough stalker. There was too much of the Void inside her. It made her dangerous then, and it makes her dangerous now. “There wasn’t anything for me anymore. Not with him gone. I couldn’t be there any longer.”

“You had me.”

“You _left_!” she snaps back. “You dragged me along to find your past, and I indulged you. I remember enough of who I used to be. I was never curious about my history, as you were. I thought it would… satiate you. But instead, you abandoned us… _me_ , and you chose them.”

“They are my family.”

“Once, you would have called me sister,” Aeryn echoes hollowly.

Her expression twists in grief. “Aeryn, I have always loved you, you know that—”

“Not a single word. I received not a _single_ word from you when you left. Ikora got letters. I saw them. Zavala got transcripts of your actions in the Dreaming City. Once you would have called me sister, but as soon as you found a sister who shared your blood—”

“I am doing what is right, Aeryn. Not what is easy.”

“You are doing what you know how to do,” Aeryn murmurs. “And there is still so much you still do not understand. I am sorry, old friend, that it has come to this. It was never supposed to end this way, but you will forgive me. In time.”

“Aeryn—”

Her gun is twisted, corrupted. She could grant her final death, sap the Light from her heart until not even her Ghost could revive her. It would be easy. A bullet to the heart, and it would all be over.

But once, she would have called her sister.

And somehow, the bullet ends up between her eyes instead.

She doesn’t look back, even as Iriah’s Ghost rematerializes, undoing what Aeryn had just done as the exo sprints out of the dark cavern, stumbling and tripping on her own feet and the uneven ground. The cave’s mouth is wide and jagged, lined with stone teeth, and Aeryn bursts out from the dark, into the light.


End file.
